


every prophet in her house

by openended



Category: Carnivale, Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-07
Updated: 2011-06-07
Packaged: 2017-10-20 05:47:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She leaves before they get to New Canaan. Something dark is coming, she can feel it.  This isn't her fight.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	every prophet in her house

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Carnivàle’s “Babylon” and “The Day That Was The Day.” None for Sanctuary.

It started with whispered rumors. She’d scoffed when the maid delivered the telegram speaking of a lizard man traveling around the American Southwest. Of course, she’d heard of American carnivals; most of their purported “freaks” and “monsters” were nothing more than well-understood science masquerading as the extraordinary, sometimes accompanied by stage makeup. But as she received more and more telegrams, and as James reminded her of several abnormals they’d rescued from their own country’s sideshows and more than one Romany caravan, she’d packed her bags and headed across the Atlantic.

Gecko hadn’t wanted to leave. She’d tilted her head and explained her position once more, offering him a life outside of the dust and the traveling and the minuscule pay. He’d stubbornly lifted an eyebrow and looked at her over the mirror he’d been using to check his shedding scales and said he wasn’t leaving. He promised not to reveal her true identity to the others, as long as she promised to stop asking him to leave.

Jonesy had argued against Samson allowing her to stay. Another mouth to feed and the men though it bad luck to have a woman on the crew. But Samson had quoted Management and that was the end of the discussion. Jonesy had put her to work beating dust (as much dust as she could; getting all of it out was a pipe dream) from the tapestries until she had proven herself worthy of something less futile.

She’d planned to leave after Babylon. She talked to Jonesy while they were setting up the entrance and discovered she could easily hitch to Austin from there; certain she could find reasonable transportation from Austin, she’d made up her mind to take her leave after the tear-down at Babylon.

Babylon had felt _wrong_ to her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, and certainly not with enough conviction to tell anyone (not that anyone would listen to her, though Lila and Ruthie might have indulged her over breakfast, but not enough to talk Samson out of it). The town caused the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end for days before they even arrived.

* * *

She decides to stay, after Babylon. They aren’t abnormals and she wouldn’t even call them her friends, but she seems to have a calming effect on them. And in the aftermath of Dora Mae’s murder at the hands of a town full of spectres, Samson looks at her with an expression as close to pleading as she suspects the dwarf allows himself and she nods.

She spends most of her downtime sitting with Apollonia in the dusty dark quiet of the woman's trailer. Though she refuses to put stock in any sort of fortune-telling, she’s certain that the catatonic woman is an abnormal; it’s the only reasonable explanation for the excited whispers she hears from customers exiting a tarot card reading. Telekinetic, at least, and very likely telepathic. She’d ask Sofie about it, if Sofie weren’t so skittish and withdrawn.

Ruthie dies rather unexpectedly and Helen resigns herself to having one fewer acquaintance here. She watches in the shadows behind a trailer as Ben tries to revive the dead woman to no avail. Ben concerns her, a wild card, someone with power who doesn’t quite know how to wield it yet; she’s reminded of those first days after the source blood injections when John would spontaneously appear on the other side of the room looking quite perplexed as to how he got there, or she’d see a set of men’s clothing walking about the hallways of her father’s basement with a disembodied voice coming from where the head ought to be.

A few hours later and Ruthie is alive again (though few ever knew she was gone), but Lodz is dead (Samson lies to Lila, who doesn’t quite believe him, and says the blind professor went for a walk) and Helen steadfastly avoids being within eight feet of Ben if she can help it.

He’s colder, now. Like John after they discovered he was responsible for Whitechapel.

She’s determined to look for an exit again, but she can’t quite bring herself to leave Sofie after the fire. Sofie has lost everything, and Helen feels a familiar tugging in her gut that urges her to help the younger woman. Helen begins to suspect that there’s more to Sofie than she originally thought, but never gets close enough to find out. She stops trying when Libby takes up with Jonesy and she sees the jealousy in Sofie’s face. It takes them a full day to discover Sofie hasn’t come with them, and Helen realizes she feels calmer without her around.

They begin moving about in a ridiculous pattern that will take them up through Wyoming. Grumbles questioning Management's judgment start to make their way through camp; the route won't take them through any town with money, or within one hundred miles of a town worth leaving for. She's formed a sort of friendship with Samson, but knows he won't let her within spitting distance of Management's trailer to discuss the shift with the man himself. She overhears Jonesy arguing with Samson and drifts close enough that she can see as Jonesy draws a map in the dust on the hood of the lead truck, showing just how far off the path they’re going. She can’t get anywhere from Wyoming, that’s for sure.

She rubs dust out of her eye and squints up at the sun filtering through the silhouette of the Ferris wheel. That night, she watches as Ben brings a dead child back to life and thinks that maybe he’s not quite like John, after all. Her decision to avoid him doesn't change.

There’s a story, she knows it, behind Jonesy’s healed leg. And she knows it has something to do with Ben, but Libby won’t talk to her and Jonesy and Samson are too busy quelling Lila’s attempted uprising to reveal anything. She wonders if she could collect a vial of Ben’s blood while he sleeps and somehow get it to James for testing before it destabilizes in the heat.

They pick up a preacher’s sermon on the radio once they make it into California. Helen shudders with the voice, smooth and low and even and full of conviction with an edge of something deeper, darker. _Good evening, brothers and sisters, and welcome to the Church of the Air._

Now she’s reminded of John.

* * *

She leaves before they get to New Canaan. Something dark is coming, she can feel it.

But, for once in her lifetime, this is not her fight.


End file.
